This apparatus will be more particularly illustrated by the following description of a wristwatch which falls within the definition of a portable electronic apparatus with an analogue display device.
Electronic wristwatches whose hour, minute and seconds hands are driven by at least one stepping motor controlled by a time base and a microprocessor for displaying, in cooperation with the hour-circle, either the current time or another time related or non-time related piece of information upon an appropriate actuation of an external control member, are known. U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,288 discloses in its most elaborate embodiment, a timepiece including a single motor, a time base, a switch assembly and a control circuit for displaying either the current time or, upon actuation of an exterior control member, for driving both hands separately, the minute hand indicating for example the value of this time related or non-time related piece of information in cooperation with the hour-circle and the hour hand indicating the nature of the information inscribed on a ring in the vicinity of the hour-circle. The information may be, for examples an alarm time and its on or off state. U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,177 proposes an improvement wherein the hands are driven separately by two motors and cooperate in a first step by superposing each other to indicate, as mentioned above, the nature of the information, and then position themselves to indicate, in cooperation with the hour-circle, the value of said piece of information.
The freedom provided by the use of independent motors has inspired other modes of cooperation between the hands for displaying information other than, the current time.
In a non-limitative manner, U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,835 can be mentioned. This patent discloses a watch that can be set in a “weather forecast” mode, which is totally independent of the time base of the watch. In this “weather forecast” mode, the hour hand indicates in cooperation with one graduation arranged inside the hour-circle of the watch, an atmospheric pressure variation and the minute hand points towards pictograms which are drawn on the bezel and representative of a weather forecast as a function of the variation.
These documents enable thus time related or non-time related information to be displayed in cooperation with two graduations or even with three graduations if the seconds hand is also driven by an independent motor, but these documents do not suggest in any manner the designation of a piece of information located in any position on the dial.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,551 concerning a compass watch having the cardinal points born by the bezel and indicating the geographical north with respect to a selected direction with the aid of the minute hand, may also be cited. This patent discloses a second embodiment wherein the time related indications are transferred onto the bezel and wherein the dial comprises over three concentric rings names of places, for example names of cities, the latter being provided with markings. One could even imagine covering the entire dial with places and markings. These markings can be selected by the minute hand whose position is interpreted by a microprocessor which selects the magnetic declination of said place in a correspondence table, combines said declination with signals provided by magnetic sensors of the permanent magnet of the compass and commands the hour hand motor to move said hand in the direction of geographical north or in another predetermined direction such as the direction of Mecca. If one wishes to use such a watch in a reversible manner, it would be difficult to determine one's location using the minute hand, since places even far from each other may have similar or identical magnetic declinations, i.e. markings aligned along a same radius as Rome and Denver for example. Thus, this document does not in any way suggest how to designate any position on the dial in an unambiguous manner.
It is thus an object of the present invention to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks of the prior art, by proposing a portable electronic apparatus with an analogue display device provided with a device for indicating in an unambiguous manner any position over practically the entire the surface of a dial, this position being representative of any information, such as a time related different piece of information or a complementary piece of information to the current time, or a non-time related piece of information, or even a piece of information representative of a game exploiting this possibility of using the “whole dial” for analogue display.